2024-07-11 00:37:28
A few days ago, after receiving loans from some donor organizations including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the country’s foreign exchange reserves have increased to about two billion dollars. This time, the country’s reserves have decreased again after paying $142 million for the import bills of May and June of the Asian Clearing Union (ACU). As a result, foreign exchange reserves have decreased to 20.47 billion dollars. At the beginning of this month, it was 21.79 billion dollars.
This information was informed by the Bangladesh Bank spokesperson’s office on Wednesday (July 10). According to the company’s data, now the gross reserves are 26.17 billion dollars. But there is a difference of 5.7 billion dollars with Bangladesh Bank’s calculation based on the BPM-6 method according to the conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). That is, gross reserves are 20.46 billion as per BPM-6 manual.
Apart from this, there is another account of Bangladesh Bank’s net or actual reserves, which is only given to the IMF and not disclosed. However, in late June, the central bank officially announced that reserves had increased by more than $2 billion following the IMF bailout. At the end of that time (June 30), Bangladesh Bank’s net international reserve (NIR) or expendable reserve was 1,677 million US dollars. From now on, after paying Akur’s bill, about one and a half billion dollars will be deducted from the NIR; In other words, expendable reserves in the country have decreased to 15 billion. 5 and a half billion dollars per month, this reserve cannot meet the import expenses of three months. Normally a country should have reserves equal to minimum 3 months import cost. Bangladesh is now at the bottom of that standard. One of the indicators of a country’s economy is its foreign exchange reserves.
Aku is an international transaction settlement system. Through this, transactions between Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are settled. Akur is headquartered in Tehran, the capital of Iran. In this system, the central bank of the respective countries pays the import amount every two months. But now Sri Lanka does not have the membership of Akur. Due to the economic crisis, the country’s AKU membership has been temporarily suspended due to failure to meet various conditions for payment of import expenses for a long time.
ACUR membership is open to central banks of all countries located within the geographic boundaries of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia (ESCAP).